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58 RMYC YEARBOOK
The Caledonian Canal looks, on the map, like a straight
line drawn through Scotland, from Inverness on the east
coast to For t William on the West, a line which runs
roughly nor theast/southwest. At some point in prehistor y
a movement in tectonic plates sliced Scotland along a sor t
of dotted line (created by a series of lakes) which moved
the top bit of Scotland a little bit then stopped.This left
intact the series of lakes – Loch Dochfour, Loch Ness,
Loch Oich, and Loch Lochy – which needed only to be
connected up to link the Scottish coasts with a 60-mile
passage. Only one third of it had to be man-made.
My stor y is in itself a form of prehistor y as it takes place
in the late 1960s, a fabled and golden time in Britain. A
friend of mine had bought the boat in Inverness with
the intention of bringing her to the south coast and he
preferred to bring her through the Irish Sea instead of
the possibly more boisterous Nor th Sea. The previous
owner had agreed to take her as far as Loch Ness, which
is where we joined her.
I first sighted our beautiful craft while sitting in a car high
above Loch Ness as she motored gently through the
combination of mist and fine drizzling rain, which Scotland
claims as its own. The swirling mist, the cloud, and the
play of light and shadow created an atmosphere of magic
and the thought struck me that if we spotted Nessie the
Monster I would not have been at all surprised as the
landscape was affected by an air of unreality.
We met the boat at a wharf and the days that followed
were among the most serene of my life; we were
wrapped in a cocoon of contentment. We dawdled along
with no sense of urgency, except the pressure of tr ying
to cover distance as time was not impor tant. Meals were
taken in the canal-side pubs, tiny buildings with fine food
and warm fires. Memor y tells me that some of these tiny
villages – a pub and two or three houses – had no road
access, ser viced only by canal traffic. This sounds unlikely
but at that time perhaps it was true. Or perhaps, more
likely, the memories have been distor ted by the passage
of time and the golden glow of nostalgia.
At night we stumbled out from the snug pub bars which
were heated by open fires, into our snug wood-lined
cabin, which was heated by an open coal fire of its own.
I’m not a big fan of strong alcohol, but the local whiskies,
produced by blokes called Hamish in the distiller y in the
next paddock were soft and smooth enough to make
grown men weep.
TOP: View over Loch Sunart from a shore walk
ABOVE: Loch Ness at Dores
BELOW: Loch Meiklie near Balnain, Glen Urquhart
NESS IS MORE